In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

by Elizabeth George

  Thank God, Lynley thought. He finally had her attention. He warmed to his theme. “When you're given an assignment, you're expected to complete it. Without question or argument. And when you complete it, you're expected to turn in a report that reflects the dispassionate language of the disinterested professional. And after that you're expected to await your next assignment with a mind that remains open and capable of assimilating information. What you're not expected to do is create a disguised commentary on the wisdom of the investigation's course should you happen to disagree with it. This”—he slapped her report against his palm—“is an excellent illustration of why you're in the position you're in right now. Given an order that you neither like nor agree with, you take matters into your own hands. You go your own way with complete disregard for everything from the chain of command to public safety. You did that three months ago in Essex, and you're doing it now. When any other DC would be toeing the line in the hope of redeeming his name and reputation if not his career, you're still pig-headedly trotting along on whatever path pleases you most at the moment. Aren't you?”

  Head still lowered, she made no reply. But her breathing had altered, becoming shallow with the effort to hold back emotion. She seemed, at least for the moment, suitably chastened. He was gratified to see it.

  “All right,” he said. “Now hear me well. I want a warrant to tear Reeve's house apart. I want a team of four officers to do the tearing. I want from that house a single pair of shoes with hexagons on the soles and every scrap of evidence you can find on the escort service. May I put you on this and be assured that you'll carry through as directed?”

  She made no reply.

  He felt exasperation plague him. “Havers, are you listening to me?”

  “A search.”

  “Yes. That's what I said. I want a search warrant. And when you've got it, I want you on the team that goes to Reeve's house.”

  She raised her head from the pictures. “A bloody search,” she said, and her face was unaccountably altered now, bright with a smile. “Yes. Yes. Bloody hell, Inspector. By God. That's absolutely it.”

  “That's what?”

  “Don't you see?” She shook one of the pictures in her excitement. “Sir, don't you see? You're thinking of Martin Reeve because his motive's been established and it's so bloody obvious that any other motive is small beans in comparison. And because his motive's so out there for you, everything you come across ends up getting attached to it, whether it belongs attached or not. But if you forget about Reeve for a moment, you can see in these pictures that—”

  “Havers.” Lynley fought against the tide of his own incredulity. The woman was unquashable, unsinkable, and ungovernable. For the first time, he wondered how he'd ever managed to work with her at all. “I'm not going to repeat your assignment after this. I'm going to give it to you. And you're going to do it.”

  “But I only want you to see that—”

  “No! God damn it! Enough. Get the warrant. I don't care what you have to do to get it. But get it. Put together a team from CID. Go to that house. Tear it apart. Bring me shoes with hexagonal markings on the sole and evidence of the escort service. Better yet, bring me a weapon that could have been used on Terry Cole. Is that clear? Now, go.”

  She stared at him. For a moment he believed she would actually defy him. And in that moment he knew how DO Barlow must have felt out on the North Sea in pursuit of a suspect and having her every decision second-guessed by a subordinate who was incapable of keeping her opinions to herself. Havers was damned lucky Barlow hadn't been the officer with the gun in that boat. Had the DO been armed, that North Sea chase might have come to a very different conclusion.

  Havers rose. Carefully, she placed the photographs of Vi Nevin's maisonette on his desk. She said, “A warrant, a search. A team of four officers. I'll see to it, Inspector.”

  Her tone was measured. It was utterly polite, deeply respectful, and completely proper.

  Lynley chose to ignore what all of that meant.

  Martin Reeve's palms itched. He pressed his fingernails into them. They began to burn. Tricia had backed him when he needed her to back him with that butthole of a cop, but he couldn't depend on her to hold to the story. If someone promised her enough of the beast at a moment when her stash was low and she wanted to crank up, she'd say or do anything. All the cops had to do was to get her alone, get her away from the house, and she'd be butter on their toast in less than two hours. And he couldn't watch over her every frigging minute of every God damn day for the rest of their lives to make sure that didn't happen.

  Whattaya wanna know? Gimme the stuff.

  Just sign on the line, Mrs. Reeve, and you'll have it.

  And it would be done. No. Better. He would be done. So he had to firm up his story.

  On the one hand, he could muscle a lie from someone who already knew firsthand what could come from refusing his request. On the other hand, he could demand the truth from someone else who might take an appeal for common veracity as a sign of weakness. Go the first way, and he ended up owing a favour, which handed the reins of his life to someone else. Go the second way, and he looked like a pantywaist who could be dissed without fear of reprisal.

  So the situation was a basic no-winner: Caught between a rock and a hard place, Martin wanted to find enough dynamite to blast a passageway while keeping the damage from falling stones to a minimum.

  He went to Fulham. All his current troubles had their genesis there, and it was there that he was determined to find the solutions as well.

  He got into the building on Rostrevor Road the easy way: He rang each bell in rapid succession and waited for the fool who would buzz him inside without asking him to identify himself over the intercom.

  He dashed up the stairs, but at the landing he paused. A sign was affixed to the maisonette's door, and even from where he stood, he could read it. Crime Scene, it announced. Do Not Enter.

  “Shit,” Martin said.

  And he heard the cop's low, terse voice once again, as clearly as if he were on the landing as well. “Tell me about Vi Nevin.”

  “Fuck,” Martin said. Was she dead?

  He dug up the answer by descending the stairs and knocking up the residents of the flat directly beneath Vi Nevin's front door. They'd been giving a party on the night before, but they hadn't been too occupied with their guests—or too smashed—to take note of the arrival of an ambulance. Much had been done by the paramedics to shield the shrouded form they carried out of the building, but the haste with which they removed her and the subsequent appearance of what had seemed like a score of policemen who began asking questions throughout the building suggested that she'd been the victim of a crime.

  “Dead?” Martin grabbed onto the young man's arm when he would have turned back into his flat to catch up on more of the sleep of which Martin's appearance at his door had robbed him. “Wait. Damn it. Was she dead?”

  “She wasn't in a body bag” was the indifferent reply. “But she might've popped her clogs in hospital during the night.”

  Martin cursed his luck and, back in his car, got out his London Streetfinder. The nearest hospital was the Chelsea and Westminster on the Fulham Road, and he drove there directly If she was dead, he was done for.

  The nurse in casualty informed him that Miss Nevin had been moved. Was he a relative?

  An old friend, Martin told her. He'd been to her home and discovered there'd been an accident … some sort of trouble … ? If he could see Vi and set his mind at rest that she was all right … So that he in turn could let their mutual friends and her relatives know … ? He should have shaved, he thought. He should have worn the Armani jacket. He should have prepared for an eventuality beyond the simple knocking on a door, gaining admittance, and coercing cooperation.

  Miss Schubert—for such was the name on her identification badge—eyed him with the open animosity of the overworked and the underpaid. She consulted a clipboard and gave him a room number. He didn't miss the
fact that when he thanked her and headed towards the elevators, she reached for a phone.

  Thus, he wasn't entirely unprepared for the sight of a uniformed constable seated outside the closed door of Vi Nevin's room. He was, however, completely unprepared for the appearance of the orange-haired harpy in a crumpled pantsuit who was sitting next to the cop. She leapt to her feet and came hurtling in Martin's direction the moment she saw him.

  She shrieked, “It's 'im, it's 'im, it's 'im!” She flew at Martin like a starving hawk with a rabbit in sight, and she sank her talons into the front of his shirt and screeched, “I'll kill you. Bastard. Bastard!”

  She shoved him into the wall and butted him with her head. His own head flew back and smacked against the edge of a notice board. His jaw clamped shut. Teeth sinking into his tongue, he tasted blood. She'd ripped the buttons from his shirt and gone for his neck when the constable finally managed to pull her off. Whereupon she began screaming, “Arrest him! He's the one! Arrest him! Arrest him!” and the constable asked for Martin's ID. He somehow dispersed a small crowd that had gathered at the end of the corridor to watch the unfolding scene, a minor kindness for which Martin was grateful.

  The woman held at arm's length from him, Martin was able to recognise her at last. It was the hair colour that had thrown him off. When they'd met—when she'd come for her first and only interview at MKR—she'd been black-haired. Otherwise, she was little changed. Still skeletal, still sallow-skinned, with very bad teeth, even worse breath, and the body odour of three-day-old halibut.

  “Shelly Platt,” he said.

  “You did it! You tried to kill her!”

  Martin wondered how his day could possibly get worse. He had his answer a moment later. The constable studied his identification, still holding Shelly in a death-grip. He said, “Miss, miss, one thing at a time,” and he took her with him while he went to the phone at the nurses’ station and punched in a number.

  “Look,” Martin called to him. “I only want to know if Miss Nevin's all right. I spoke to someone in casualty. I was told she'd been transferred here.”

  “He wants to kill her!” Shelly cried.

  “Don't be an idiot,” Martin responded. “I'd hardly show up in the middle of the day and present my ID if I planned to kill her. What the hell happened?”

  “As if you don't know!”

  “I just need to talk to her,” he told the constable when he was returned his ID and refused admittance. “That's all. It probably won't take five minutes.”

  “Sorry” was the reply.

  “Look. I don't think you understand. This is an urgent matter and—”

  “Aren’ you going t’arrest him?” Shelly demanded. “Wha's he have t'do to her before you lot cart him off to the nick?”

  “Will you at least shut her up long enough for me to explain to you that—”

  “Orders're orders,” the constable said, and he loosened his grip on Shelly Platt just enough to indicate to Martin that a temporary retreat was called for.

  He made that retreat with as much grace as he could muster, considering that the orange-haired termagant had raised enough ruckus for him to become the cynosure of the entire hospital floor. He returned to the Jaguar, threw himself inside, and flicked its air conditioning on full blast with every vent pointing at his face.

  Shit, he thought. Fuck, hell, shit. He had little doubt about who had been on the receiving end of that constable's phone call, so he'd put himself in line for another visit from the cops. He considered what sort of light he was going to shine upon his trip to the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. “Getting corroboration for my story last night” hardly seemed credible when one considered from whom he was attempting to wrest corroboration in the first place.

  He jerked the car into gear and roared out of the car park. On the Fulham Road once more, he pulled down the sun visor and used the recessed mirror within it to examine the damage Shelly Platt had done to him. Jesus, she was a vicious little cat. She'd managed to draw blood on his chest when she'd grabbed his shirt. He'd be wise to get a tetanus shot pronto.

  He cut up Finborough Road, heading for home and considering what options were available to him now. It appeared that there was no way he was going to get close to Vi Nevin any time soon and, since the cop on guard in front of her room had no doubt phoned that goon who'd dropped by Lansdowne Road in the middle of the previous night, it also appeared that there was no way he was going to get close to her any time at all. At least not while the cops were doing their bloodhound bit on the Maiden whore's killing, and that might go on for months. He had to develop another plan to get corroboration for his alibi, and he found his mind feverishly coming up with one scenario, only to dismiss it and come up with another.

  On the Exhibition Hall side of Earl's Court Station, he stopped for a traffic light. He waved off a street urchin who wanted to wash his windscreen for fifty p, and he observed a hooker in negotiations with a potential client by the Underground entrance. He made an instant evaluation of her in a knee-jerk reaction to the sight of her Band-Aid-size skirt of magenta spandex, her black polyester blouse with its plunging neckline and its senseless ruffles, her stiletto heels and her fishnet stockings: She was a hand-or-mouth bitch only, he decided. Twenty-five pounds if the John was desperate; no more than ten if she and her coke habit were working the street together.

  The light changed, and as he drove off, Martin's sense of grievance against the police began to grow in him. He was doing the whole shitting city one hell of a favour, he decided, and no one—least of all the cops—seemed to realise or appreciate that. His girls didn't clutter up the sidewalks making deals with clients, and they sure as hell didn't pollute the landscape by dressing like something out of an adolescent's wet dream. They were refined, educated, attractive, and discreet, and if they did take money for engaging in the odd sexual encounter or two and if they did pass on a percentage to him, who made it possible for them to be in the company of wealthy and successful men who were willing to recompense them richly for their services, who the hell cared? Who the hell did it hurt? No one. The bottom line was that sex had a place in men's lives that it did not have in the lives of women. For men it was a signature act, primal and necessary to their identity. Their wives grew tired of it or bored by it, but the men did not. And if someone was prepared to provide those men with access to women who welcomed their attentions, women willing to allow their bodies to be the soft and pliable wax into which those men poured their juices not to mention left the indelible impression of their very characters, why couldn't money be exchanged for such a service? And why couldn't someone—like himself—with the organisational skills and the vision to recruit exceptional women for the entertainment of exceptional men be allowed to make a living doing it?

  If the laws had been written by visionaries like himself and not by a group of spineless jerks who were more concerned with being able to feed at the public trough than they were with being even marginally realistic about activities participated in by consenting adults, Martin thought, then he wouldn't have been in the position he was in at this very moment. He wouldn't be scrambling for someone who could vouch for his whereabouts and get the police off his back, because the police would never have been on his back in the first place. And even if they had come calling and had asked their questions and made their demands, they wouldn't have had a single thing to hold over his head to gain cooperation because he wouldn't have been living on the wrong side of the law in the first place.

  And what sort of country was it, anyway, where prostitution was legal but living off prostitution wasn't? What was prostitution but a means of livelihood? And who the hell were they kidding trying to regulate it from Westminster, when three-quarters of those hypocrites who planted their asses on those green leather benches were screwing their eyeballs out with any secretary, student, or parliamentary assistant who appeared even remotely willing?

  Fuck it, the entire situation made him want to punch holes through walls. A
nd the more he thought of it, the angrier he became. And the angrier he became, the more he focused on the cause of all his current troubles. Forget Maiden and Nevin, he realised. They were taken care of, after all. They hadn't been the ones to spill their miserable guts to the cops. Tricia, on the other hand, remained to be dealt with.

  He spent the rest of the drive considering how best to do this. What he came up with wasn't pleasant, but when was it pleasant when a notable figure on the social scene loses his wife to heroin despite his best efforts to save her from herself and to shield her from the displeasure of her family and the censure of an unforgiving public?

  He felt his mood lift. His lips curved upwards, and he began to hum. He made the turn from Lansdowne Walk into Lansdowne Road.

  And there he saw them.

  Four men were mounting the front steps to his house, with PLAINCLOTHES COPS written all over them. They were beefy, tall, and designed to tyrannise. They looked like gorillas in fancy dress.

  Martin hit the accelerator. He swerved into the drive. He was out of the Jaguar and up the steps in their wake before they had a chance to ring the bell. “What do you want?” he demanded.

  Gorilla One removed a white envelope from the pocket of a leather bomber jacket. “Search warrant,” he said.

  “What? Search for what?”

  “Are you opening the door or are we breaking it down?”

  “I'm phoning my solicitor.” Martin shoved past them and unlocked the door.

  “Whatever you want,” Gorilla Two said.

  They followed him inside. Gorilla One gave instructions as Martin raced for the phone. Two of the cops were right on his heels and into his office. The other two pounded up the stairs. Shit, he thought, and he shouted, “Hey! My wife's up there!”

  “They'll say hello,” Gorilla One said.

  As Martin frantically punched in the phone number, One began removing books from the shelves and Two went for a filing cabinet. “I want you fuckers out of here,” Martin told them.